Purpose
The purpose of the Alliance CONSER funnel is to give Alliance members a contact point for the enhancement of Cooperative Online Serials Program (CONSER) serials records that they cannot enhance for themselves.
Submit a Serials Cataloging Change Request
Scope
The funnel focuses on edits to continuing resources records that affect access and/or are vital for identification of resources owned by Alliance libraries lacking the necessary authorization to edit the records themselves. The requesting library is responsible for all creation and editing of records for which they have the necessary level of OCLC authentication.
All non-CONSER Alliance libraries may submit records. Funnel participants will complete the requested edits as time allows based on current volume of requests.
Background
The decision to establish a CONSER funnel was a direct result of the Alliance move to a shared ILS in 2013 and complications arising from the way catalog records are imported into that system. That, combined with an absolute policy restricting editing of CONSER records to established CONSER institutions, means that the only way to guarantee a library’s edits of CONSER records will remain in the Alliance catalog record is to have those edits performed directly in OCLC by a CONSER library.
The nature of serials is such that it is inevitable that non-CONSER libraries will need to edit CONSER records. A CONSER funnel is one way of dealing with this situation.
A pilot project undertaken in 2014/15 and reviewed by the Collaborative Technical Services Working Group in 2015 showed that there was sufficient demand for CONSER edits to establish a permanent Alliance CONSER Funnel.
Funnel Participants
Participating CONSER institutions:
- Portland State University
- University of Oregon
- University of Portland
- University of Washington